Nine dead in Indonesian hotel blasts: police (AFP) – 2 hours ago
JAKARTA — At least nine people have been killed and 41 have been injured, many of them foreigners, after bombs exploded in two luxury hotels in central Jakarta, police have said.
Police and officials on Friday said "high explosive bombs" caused the two blasts in the Indonesian capital which targeted the Ritz-Carlton hotel and the nearby JW Marriott in the upscale Mega Kuningan business district in the centre of the city around 8:00am (0100 GMT).
"I heard two sounds like 'boom, boom' coming from the Marriott and the Ritz- Carlton. Then I saw people running out," security guard Eko Susanto told AFP.
Blood was spattered on the street outside the Marriott and police had sealed off the area, an AFP correspondent said. A large plume of smoke could be seen rising above the business district of the Indonesian capital.
Windows had been blown out of a second-storey restaurant at the Ritz- Carlton, but there was little damage to the Marriott that was visible from outside.
"There were two explosions, one in the Marriott and one in the Ritz-Carlton," a police spokesman said.
Another witness told AFP he saw several foreigners covered in blood in the immediate aftermath of the explosion at the Marriott.
Pakaya said a New Zealander was among the wounded, while officials in Seoul said a South Korean man in his 50s was also injured. An Australian was reported to have suffered leg injuries.
Police said it was too early to say whether the explosions were the result of a militant attack like those that killed 12 people at the Jakarta Marriott in 2003 and more than 200 in Bali in 2002.
President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, who was re-elected to a second term in the mainly Muslim country last week, was "deeply concerned over this incident," a spokesman for his office said.
The Islamic militant network Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) has been blamed for a string of bombings on local and Western targets in Indonesia and other parts of Southeast Asia in recent years.
As well as the 2002 Bali bombings and 2003 Marriott attack, JI was also blamed for a suicide attack on the Australian embassy in Jakarta in 2004 which left 10 dead and a second attack in Bali in 2005 which killed 20.
JI has been linked by Western governments to the Al-Qaeda network and key JI leader Hambali, who was arrested in Thailand in 2003, was handed over to US custody and is being detained at US prison at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.
The Indonesian authorities arrested many of the top leadership of JI in the aftermath of the Bali bombings and analysts believed the organisation had been severely weakened.
However several key members remained at large including top bombmaker Noordin Mohammed Top, a Malaysian.
Three members of JI were executed in November last year for their role in the 2002 bombings in Bali, and analysts warned at the time there could be reprisal attacks.
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